The present invention relates in general to rail vehicles and in particular to a new and useful disk brake arrangement for a rail vehicle having a multi-stage reduction gear with an intermediate shaft which carries a disk brake, the calipers and mechanism to activate the calipers being fixed to a housing of the reduction gear.
Disc brakes of rail vehicles usually act directly on the track wheel, i.e. the track wheels are already designed as brake discs and are engaged by breaking jaws. Such an arrangement considerably increases the weight of the track wheel and thus of the unsprung masses of the rail vehicle. If now, in order to reduce the mass of the wheel set, the brake mechanism with its braking jaws, its brake cylinders, and so on, is suspended from the sprung portion of the vehicle, disadvantageous relative movements between the parts of the braking system occur during operation.
This drawback is certainly eliminated in a braking mechanism in which the brake disc is driven from the track wheel axle through universal-joint shafts and through any kind of transmission, and mounted horizontally in the sprung frame, in accordance with German AS No. 10 47 825. Quite aside from the fact that this prior art arrangement has been developed for small-wheel vehicles, which calls for some accommodation of the brake disc whose diameter then is not limited to that of the track wheel, this design is a multipart arrangement requiring a separate drive of the brake disc and a separate mounting thereof.